Happily Ever After

Chapter 18

18

221B, BAKER STREET – SHERLOCK HOLMES, A CONAN DOYLE

By Tuesday, my resolution was wavering.

Under the watchful eye of Oswald, I had stripped all the shelves again and piled the books on the floor. Then I had systematically examined each individual shelf, pulling, prodding, wiggling and yanking. After that, I’d taken the bookcases as a whole, dragging any unattached away from the panelling so that I could tap the walls, lifting to look for spaces underneath and checking for hidey-holes or suspiciously hollow sounding places.

After two days of this, with absolutely no result other than occasionally toppling book mountains, I was filthy, exhausted, and building a whole new set of muscles that I was absolutely never going to need again.

I stood, resting my back against the table, and surveyed the room. Or what I could see of it through the clouds of irritated dust, which swirled and coiled through the air as though I had disturbed a nest of tiny insects.

‘Nope,’ I said to Oswald and The Master, who were both staring at me as though they believed I had taken leave of my senses, and in this house I had quite a lot of competition for that stare. ‘They really aren’t in here, are they?’

The cat blinked and licked his front again, so that he could stretch his chin upward and better appreciate the warmth from the fire on his chest. Oswald just glared.

There was a tap at the window and I turned to see the form of Jay, nose flattened on the glass panels. I waved and went over.

‘Hello, how are you?’ Jay leaned against the ledge outside and peered through the gap. I’d opened the window a crack in a hopeful attempt to release some of the dust into the wild. It hadn’t worked.

‘Fed up. How’s your mum? Thanks for leaving me the note.’

‘She’s fine, thanks. Mending nicely and the installation for the landscaping show is all done. And if I hadn’t left the note, you’d probably be launching books at my head right now. Can I come in, or are you under observation?’

I opened the window wider. ‘Come in. Hugo is doing an internet shop with Mrs Compton, mainly to prevent her from buying arsenic and cyanide, and Lady Tanith is upstairs somewhere, supposedly lying down, but that’s a whole other story.’

Jay hopped in. He didn’t need the paper. Today he wasn’t wearing his work clothes and it was nice to see him in normal jeans and a T-shirt that actually fitted. ‘I was gone three days ,’ he said, once he’d landed on the floor inside. ‘You mean that there’s yet more bonkers stuff gone on while I’ve been away?’

In hushed tones, although not too hushed because he had to watch my lips carefully and ask for me to repeat a few things, I told Jay about what I’d found in the attic. He stretched his eyes very wide.

‘Good grief. That’s halfway into sectioning territory. So she goes up there and…?’

‘Well, I don’t exactly know. She may just find it comforting to have all Oswald’s things in one place where she can see them, and she only goes up to look through the photographs, read his books and remember good times,’ I said, giving the benefit of the doubt so much leeway that it threatened to capsize. ‘Perhaps she just lights a candle to his memory.’

‘Or it could be blood sacrifices, chanting and trying to invoke Oswald’s spirit,’ Jay said, pulling a face. ‘You need to tell Hugo.’

‘What? No, I don’t, do I? I mean, it’s private, it’s Lady Tanith’s business. Like Hugo’s…’ I bit my tongue. ‘Hugo has his own peccadillos that he doesn’t want his mother to know about.’

‘Are they teetering on the edge of being something that means the police should be informed?’ Jay sat on the sofa, leaning forward over his knees.

‘No! Of course not. But, to be fair, neither are Lady Tanith’s.’ I felt the pity again, making my heart lurch. ‘Day to day she’s fine. Well, no, not fine, obviously, but she’s hardly running amok with a chainsaw. She keeps the estate ticking over, she’s in charge of the finances…’ I had an awful moment of wondering what would happen to the finances when Hugo had free rein with the money and the ability to attend all the vintage and historic clothing sales in the world. ‘She’s apparently sane, more or less. She just really, really loved Oswald.’

‘But fifty years .’ Jay dropped his head and fiddled with his hearing aids. ‘Fifty years, Andi. That’s not love. It’s not even obsession. I think Lady Tanith has levelled up on the obsession thing and she’s into – I dunno, whatever comes next.’ He looked up at me now. ‘And that might be something you want to think about, if you can’t find these diaries.’

We both stared around the library, which looked like a room in a photoshoot for Hoarders’ Weekly .

‘She’s going to go postal, isn’t she?’ I said, eventually.

‘Well, if they aren’t here, they aren’t here,’ Jay said, standing up and coming over. The Master oozed out from in front of the fire to rub against Jay’s legs, purring. ‘You can’t make them be here. You’re sure they definitely aren’t among the sacred tomes up in the attic?’

I shook my head. ‘Pretty sure. The books up there looked to be properly bound and titled from the extremely quick glance I had from between my fingers, whilst screaming.’

‘Maybe Lady Tanith got it wrong, and Oswald got rid of the diaries.’

‘Right. You tell her that,’ I said, rubbing my arms. ‘When I’m a very long way away. Like Montreal or something.’

Jay put a hand on my wrist. ‘You’ve thought about going out to join your parents? When you hate everything about their lifestyle?’

I didn’t know how to say it. These last couple of nights I’d run through my potential futures, lying in bed with my head itching from the dust and with desperation building. I couldn’t live in the bus, it was uninhabitable, and I was saying this after having spent a couple of months at Templewood. Jude would welcome me, of course, as would Ollie, but there, among all her carefully curated ornaments, working a cleaning job or in a shop or behind a bar I would always be aware of my Cinderella status. The girl who wouldn’t speak up for herself. The second-best sister.

It had dawned on me that I could just swallow my pride, join my parents and take up my empire. Let them put me in front of the camera to talk about my experiences growing up as the daughter of a pair of late-to-the-party hippies, with no fixed abode. The freedom of the road before us and the lack of any roots behind. I could spin it and make it sound TV-worthy. I’d learned how to keep secrets, after all, at Templewood.

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ I said. ‘It was just an idea.’

Jay moved away and over to the nearest pile of books. He began picking them up, one at a time, staring at the spines and riffling the pages. This did not help the overloaded dusty atmosphere. ‘I missed you, you know,’ he said suddenly, eyes on a page of particularly dense print.

‘Did you?’ I stared at him. The idea was outlandish, ridiculous. Nobody had, as far as I was aware, ever missed me before.

‘Mmmm. I’d had plans for our lunch.’

‘Oh yes,’ I said cautiously.

‘Roast beef, Yorkshire puddings, the full works. Trifle, I thought, for pudding.’ He was still keeping his eyes on the book. I wondered if he wanted to give all of them this close attention; if so, I could resign and hand my job over to him.

‘That sounds nice.’

‘And then I was going to make you a suggestion.’ One eye looked up at me now, angled so I could see a glint in it. I thought, very briefly, about the warmth of his body when we’d sat in the icehouse.

‘Er,’ I said.

‘I was going to ask you if you’d ever considered training as a gardener.’ The book snapped shut, breaking the mood which had become weighted with something – a look, a touch, an imagining.

‘ What ?’ I started to laugh now. Jay really was the master of tension-breaking.

‘I just thought, you seem to like the outdoors, you’re not afraid of rain, you’re determined and creative and good with people. And I’m not going to be here forever, charming though Templewood is. Even before Mum’s accident I was thinking about going back and taking over the landscaping business, training up someone to work alongside me. What do you think?’

‘Er,’ I said again, probably wearing the same expression as a prisoner who has been incarcerated forever in a tiny cell suddenly seeing the door swing open and the whole of life going on outside and who has no idea how to function in society.

‘I mean, I know you, and you know about the’ – he pointed at his ears – ‘and the…’ He flashed his wrist. ‘It saves time explaining, and you know that you can’t just shout to me across a site and have me respond. It doesn’t have to be… you and me, I think we’ve got a… but that’s incidental, I don’t mind if you don’t want… it could just be as business partners, but I know I’d like… if you felt the same… I’m going to stop talking now, because you look like a fish.’

I closed my mouth. ‘But… but you hardly know me!’

‘I wouldn’t know anyone else I interviewed to come and work with me either,’ Jay pointed out, reasonably. ‘And I know quite a bit about you. Plus, you’ve seen me with my willy in my hand; that tends to bond people quite fast.’

I laughed now. ‘And you’ve seen me in transparent wet pyjamas.’

‘That did feed into my decision somewhat, I will admit.’

I flopped down onto the sofa, as though all my bones had been removed. The Master, sensing a lap opportunity, left Jay’s legs alone to plonk himself up next to me and prod me with a paw. ‘Can I think about it?’ I asked weakly. ‘It’s come as a bit of a shock.’

‘Of course.’ Jay came and sat next to me. ‘You’d be mad not to.’

‘In this house, “mad” is a sliding scale,’ I said, stroking the cat almost without thinking, as though those blue eyes were hypnotic.

‘It’s not sliding,’ Jay reached across me to assist in the cat-stroking, bumping against my shoulder in a touch that was – promising, was the only way I could describe it. ‘You are at one end, perpendicular and hanging on grimly, and absolutely all the other inhabitants are falling off the far side.’

‘You’re all right,’ I said, robustly.

‘I don’t live here. Jasper’s OK, but he got away. The others – how’s Hugo, on a general basis? He’s always seemed all right.’

‘Yes. Hugo’s, er, hobbies aren’t mad. Just a bit “special interest”. It’s really only Lady Tanith who’s hanging over the abyss. Oh, and Mrs Compton.’

We sat for a moment. The heater, powered by the cylinder of gas which I had been instructed by Lady Tanith ‘needs to last the whole month’, popped and the cat purred. Jay was solid beside me, adjusting one side of his hearing aid, dark and maybe just a little bit tortured, but not so badly that he was beyond redemption. He’d lost a sister. I’d lost mine that day she’d demanded a normal life. His hadn’t wanted to leave him, mine couldn’t get away fast enough.

Everyone had their demons.

I tipped my head back against the leather cushions and looked up at Oswald; his huge face seemed somewhat sympathetic today, or maybe that was because I was seeing it through dust. I wondered what demons he had carried. Apart, obviously, from Lady Tanith.

As I looked up at the portrait, The Master jumped down off my lap, leaving our stroking hands forced to entwine fingers in a clasp of understanding. We sat for a few moments longer in a feeling of dawning peace and acceptance and potential for happiness, and the cat perched himself on a pile of books that sprawled open-paged, like dancers at the finale of the Can-Can. He ‘wowed’ loudly.

‘What’s the matter with him?’ Jay asked, without moving.

‘Dunno. He really likes sitting under that picture.’ I didn’t move either. This was nice. No, it was more than nice, it was lovely.

‘Do you think he really is the reincarnation of Oswald?’

‘I hope not. He’s in bed with me most nights.’ I watched the cat, stretching himself full length against the firmly-fixed-and-not-containing-secret-cupboards panelling beneath the portrait, claws extended, as though he were trying to reach high enough to pull at the picture, the lower edge of the frame of which was around a metre and a half off the ground. ‘What are you doing? Puss?’

The cat looked at me over his shoulder, blue eyes blazing, then went back to clawing the wall.

‘Rats, do you think?’ Jay went to stand up, realised he was still holding my hand, and sat back down again.

A sudden realisation struck me. ‘Oh my God!’

Now Jay let go of my fingers and leaped to his feet. ‘What? What’s wrong? Are you all right?’

I stood up too. ‘I’ve never moved the picture!’

He stared at me. ‘You’ve never what? Moved the picture? Why the hell would you?’

‘Because it’s the only bloody place in this room that I haven’t practically taken to bits and rebuilt. It was put here when Oswald was still alive! I’ve been treating it as though it’s part of the wall, but it’s not, it’s attached to the panelling. Come on.’

The Master shot out of the way as, between us, we heaved the big table across the room to the spot underneath the portrait. Then, with a hand from Jay, I climbed up onto it, which unfortunately put me level with Oswald’s groin, and stretched my arms full length to grasp both sides of the frame. This pushed my face into the painted crotch, but I still couldn’t stretch far enough. Jay had to hop up next to me, and with him holding one side and me holding the other, we managed to slide the picture upwards enough to disengage it from whatever fixture was holding it in place.

In a choreographed movement worthy of any ballet, we spun around and let Oswald slip gently to the ground behind us, where he flopped forwards to rest his face against the nearest bookcase, like a drunk passing out at a bus stop. Now revealed was a stretch of panelling, slightly paler than the rest, having been protected from whatever had gone on in here for the best part of seventy years. It bore some vicious fixing arrangements, which had been keeping the portrait not only up, but so close to the wall that I hadn’t realised it could be removed. I wouldn’t have put it past Lady Tanith to have glued it up there.

The panelling also had a crack in it.

At first it looked like a crack in the wood, where the weight of years had pulled two planks apart, just an ordinary result of ageing and drying out. But a closer look revealed it to be some kind of hinge.

My heart began to beat faster. I’d bitten my lip in my eagerness to remove the portrait and the blood had the metallic taste of anticipation. This could be it.

‘How does it open?’ I stuck my nails in the gap and tried to prise the two halves apart.

‘I don’t know. But, look, look at the portrait fixing on the wall there.’ Jay stretched up, and by standing on tiptoe he could just reach the lower attachment that had fixed the picture in place. ‘It moves. Bit rusty now, of course, but it’s a pivot. In Oswald’s day you could have moved the picture to one side with a fingertip.’

I stared at him. ‘Ten minutes ago that would have been brilliant information. You mean we struggled to get that thing down when we could have just moved it?’

‘I don’t know it if it still works. It’s pretty old and it might have seized. But it does mean that Oswald could move the picture without taking it down.’

Jay and I looked again at the crack in the panelling. ‘Right,’ I said. ‘That’s coming off if I have to take to it with an axe.’

‘If there is a hiding place here and Oswald used it by moving the picture, it shouldn’t be that hard to open, we just have to find out how.’ Jay stood back and looked at the panel with his head on one side.

‘OK, Jonathon Creek, you work it out,’ I panted, trying to pull at the wood again.

Jay slithered down off the table and began to walk around, staring at the wall. ‘He must have used one hand to hold the picture back,’ he said, ‘so it must only take one hand to open. And it should be doable from here, assuming that that portrait isn’t life sized and Oswald wasn’t twenty feet tall.’

I got down next to him. The Master came and sat with us, all three of us now gazing at the oak panelling. ‘So it must be something really simple that we’re missing,’ I said. ‘Like just pressing it, or something.’

To demonstrate, I pressed the panel, and to our collective astonishment it popped out, sliding smoothly open to reveal a small space behind. And in that space…

‘Well, bugger me,’ Jay breathed.

A stack of six books. Slim, hardbacked notebooks, edges ruffled and worn. Almost reverently I leaned in and took them out. When I opened the first one, I could see the ink was still as bright blue as the day it was written – these had been put away and never looked at; the pages had the virginal flatness of new paper. Even, it seemed, Oswald hadn’t reread them.

September the fourth 1968

Caroline complained more of pains today. The doctor called and we have an appointment at the hospital for next week, but I suspect there will be little they can do. Whether it is rheumatism or some other form of degeneration I do not know, but she is largely confined to bed and unable to do for herself. I do what I can, but brushing her hair is beyond me.

Started another novel tonight. I feel this one may sum up the small joys to be obtained from a life mired in unhappiness.

Wilkins reports the dairy returns to be lower, instructed him to move the herd to the Upper Pasture.

Richard has a cold.

Jay read the entry over my shoulder. ‘He was quite a boring bloke, wasn’t he?’ he observed.

‘It’s a diary, not a column for Penthouse ,’ I said tartly. ‘What were you expecting? What sort of things do you put in your diary?’

Jay pulled a face. ‘Fair point,’ he said. ‘Mine is all about next year’s planting and which seeds I should be starting off. Anyway, objective achieved. You’ve found the missing diaries, well done. Lady Tanith will be ecstatic. Actually, we might want to have some Valium on standby.’

I held the diaries to my chest for a moment. Yes, Lady Tanith would be delighted. But, also, would she now terminate my employment? After all, the whole ‘catalogue my library’ had been a ruse in the first place. She could well decide that I’d done my job and I could go.

Jay was offering me a chance at a life. Gardening didn’t need loads of qualifications, plants didn’t care if you didn’t have GCSEs, as long as you knew where to put them and made sure they had water and things like that. I knew, somehow I just knew that I could be good at it. That I would enjoy working with Jay, in whatever context we found ourselves.

But I needed more time. More time to get to know him properly. Maybe a few dinners, more flasks of coffee drunk at strange hours, more casual encounters that could lead to more… something . If I left Templewood now, I only had two places to go and both of them were a long way from this bubble in time; from Jay and also from Hugo, who needed a friend.

‘I think I might hang on to them for a little while,’ I said, still clutching the bundle of notebooks. ‘Lady Tanith doesn’t need to know we’ve found them yet.’

Jay was looking at me, one eyebrow quirked as though he knew how my mind was working. ‘All right,’ he said at last. ‘We’d better put Oswald back then, hadn’t we?’

We hauled the portrait back into place, with a lot of swearing, broken nails, and the occasional yowl as we trod on the cat. Then we had to drag the table back and make everything look as it had. Eventually, the portrait was rehung, the furniture dragged back where it belonged, and now the library was, once again, just a whole load of books in random piles on the floor.

‘I did all that for nothing,’ I panted, looking at the heaps. ‘Got them all off the shelves and generated enough dust to test-drive a thousand hoovers.’

‘On the plus side,’ Jay observed, ‘at least it looks as though you are serious about finding those diaries. Ought to keep Lady Tanith quiet for at least a week. Can you let me out of the window again, please. I should go home and sort myself out for tomorrow. I have to mow obscene slogans into the lawns for the final time this year.’

With one eye on the diaries, in case they evaporated, I opened the window and Jay climbed up onto the sill. ‘Goodbye then,’ I said, suddenly awkward. ‘And thanks for helping.’

‘No problem. Well, no very big problem, anyway. I’ll probably see you tomorrow.’

Our faces were very close. Jay was sitting on the ledge facing into the room, bending forward over his knees to look into my eyes.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘And no pissing in the bushes.’

He raised a hand and cupped my cheek. ‘No pissing about of any kind.’ His voice was very quiet. ‘Just plain, direct action.’ He leaned in a little further and I moved closer. His hand was warm, the callouses rough against my skin. I closed my eyes; his breath was on my face, his mouth so very close to my lips that it felt as though we were already kissing. ‘All right?’

‘Oh yes,’ I murmured.

There was the briefest of contact, just a feather-touch of his mouth against mine, and then he lost his balance and toppled backwards out of the window to vanish into the drop onto the lawn.

‘Oh, bugger,’ floated up to me.

‘Are you all right?’

No answer. Then his head popped up, reattaching both hearing aids. ‘Sorry. They fell out.’ A breathless kind of pause, a wiggle of eyebrow, and then he was gone, moving away with both hands in his jeans pockets so his elbows stuck out like wings, and he was whistling.